Feasibility of Remote Intensive Monitoring: A Novel Approach to Reduce Black Postpartum Maternal Cardiovascular Complications.

Introduction: Approximately 53% of maternal mortality occurs in the postpartum period, a time with little monitoring and health surveillance. The objective of this study was to test the feasibility, usability, appropriateness, and acceptability of remote low-burden physiologic monitoring of Black postpartum women, using a novel soft wearable patch and home vital sign monitoring for the first 4 weeks postpartum.

Methods: A prospective longitudinal cohort feasibility study of 20 Black postpartum women was conducted using home monitoring equipment and a wearable patch with physiologic sensors measuring temperature, pulse oximetry, blood pressure, electrocardiogram (ECG), heart rate, and respiration twice daily during the first 4 weeks postpartum.

Quantitative Liver Fat Assessment by Handheld Point-of-Care Ultrasound: A Technical Implementation and Pilot Study in Adults.

Objectives: To implement, examine the feasibility of, and evaluate the performance of quantitative ultrasound (QUS) with a handheld point-of-care US (POCUS) device for assessing liver fat in adults.

Materials And Methods: This prospective IRB-approved, HIPAA-compliant pilot study enrolled adults with overweight or obesity. Participants underwent chemical-shift-encoded magnetic resonance imaging to estimate proton density fat fraction (PDFF) and, within 1 mo, QUS with a POCUS device by expert sonographers and novice operators (no prior US scanning experience).

Quantitative ultrasound assessment of fatty infiltration of the rotator cuff muscles using backscatter coefficient.

Background: To prospectively evaluate ultrasound backscatter coefficients (BSCs) of the supraspinatus and infraspinatus muscles and compare with Goutallier classification on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Methods: Fifty-six participants had shoulder MRI exams and ultrasound exams of the supraspinatus and infraspinatus muscles. Goutallier MRI grades were determined and BSCs were measured.

MASLD: What We Have Learned and Where We Need to Go-A Call to Action.

Since its introduction in 1980, fatty liver disease (now termed [MASLD]) has grown in prevalence significantly, paralleling the rise of obesity worldwide. While MASLD has been the subject of extensive research leading to significant progress in the understanding of its pathophysiology and progression factors, several gaps in knowledge remain. In this pictorial review, the authors present the latest insights into MASLD, covering its recent nomenclature change, spectrum of disease, epidemiology, morbidity, and mortality.

Influences of Variability in Attenuation Compensation on the Estimation of Backscatter Coefficient of Median Nerves in Vivo.

Objective: Peripheral nerves remain a challenging target for medical imaging, given their size, anatomical complexity, and structural heterogeneity. Quantitative ultrasound (QUS) applies a set of techniques to estimate tissue acoustic parameters independent of the imaging platform. Many useful medical and laboratory applications for QUS have been reported, but challenges remain for deployment in vivo, especially for heterogeneous tissues.

Automated Field of Interest Determination for Quantitative Ultrasound Analyses of Cervical Tissues: Toward Real-time Clinical Translation in Spontaneous Preterm Birth Risk Assessment.

Objective: Quantitative ultrasound (QUS) analysis of the human cervix is valuable for predicting spontaneous preterm birth risk. However, this approach currently requires an offline processing step wherein a medically trained analyst manually draws a free-hand field of interest (Manual FOI) for QUS computation. This offline step hinders the clinical adoption of QUS.

Trajectory of Postpartum Cervical Remodeling in Women Delivering Full-Term and Spontaneous Preterm: Sensitivity to Quantitative Ultrasound Biomarkers.

Objective: Women with a history of spontaneous preterm birth (sPTB) face an increased risk of recurrence. Yet, the factors contributing to the increased risk are unknown, hampering the development of targeted interventions. Noninvasive quantitative ultrasound (QUS) has been validated in the characterization of cervical tissue and has the potential to provide information about postpartum cervical remodeling.

Sticky Hard-Sphere Model for Characterizing Tumor Microstructure via Quantitative Ultrasound.

The use of the structure function (SF) to model interscatterer contribution to ultrasonic scattering is a major step to improve the capability and accuracy of quantitative ultrasound (QUS) and tissue characterization. However, existing QUS-based SF models rely on the hard-sphere (HS) model, which is limited in its applicability for complex scatterer distributions in real tissue. This article introduces the sticky HS (SHS) model for QUS and tissue characterization, which considers a very short-range attractive potential that accounts for the adhesive nature of biological cells and yields a new parameter called stickiness.

Post-mortem Tissue Degassing Using Positive Pressure Is Superior to Negative Pressure.

Objective: To compare the effectiveness of positive pressure (PP) and negative pressure (NP) for reducing gas inclusions in biological tissues in preparation for acoustic imaging.

Methods: Eighteen pieces of porcine liver in degassed saline were included in this study. For the PP group (n = 9 samples), a wristwatch waterproof tester was used to pressurize samples to 0.

A "solo-solvent liquid-phase" method for synthesizing sulfide solid electrolyte LiPSCl.

We report a "solo-solvent liquid-phase" method of synthesizing a highly-favored sulfide electrolyte (LiPSCl) for developing all-solid-state lithium batteries. The key chemistry for such a successful method is that tetrahydropyrrole enables synthesis of the critical precursor LiS from cheap and air-stable precursors of lithium chloride and sodium sulfide.

Toward High-Quality Sulfide Solid Electrolytes: A Liquid-Phase Approach Featured with an Interparticle Coupled Unification Effect.

Sulfide solid electrolytes (SSEs) are highly wanted for solid-state batteries (SSBs). While their liquid-phase synthesis is advantageous over their solid-phase strategy in scalable production, it confronts other challenges, such as low-purity products, user-unfriendly solvents, energy-inefficient solvent removal, and unsatisfactory performance. This article demonstrates that a suspension-based solvothermal method using single oxygen-free solvents can solve those problems.

Enhanced identification of women at risk for preterm birth via quantitative ultrasound: a prospective cohort study.

Background: Historically, clinicians have relied on medical risk factors and clinical symptoms for preterm birth risk assessment. In nulliparous women, clinicians may rely solely on reported symptoms to assess for the risk of preterm birth. The routine use of ultrasound during pregnancy offers the opportunity to incorporate quantitative ultrasound scanning of the cervix to potentially improve assessment of preterm birth risk.

Transcranial Phase Correction Using Pulse-Echo Ultrasound and Deep Learning: A 2-D Numerical Study.

Phase aberration caused by human skulls severely degrades the quality of transcranial ultrasound images, posing a major challenge in the practical application of transcranial ultrasound techniques in adults. Aberration can be corrected if the skull profile (i.e.

High-frequency Quantitative Ultrasound Imaging of Human Rotator Cuff Muscles: Assessment of Repeatability and Reproducibility.

This study evaluated the repeatability and reproducibility of using high-frequency quantitative ultrasound (QUS) measurement of backscatter coefficient (BSC), grayscale analysis, and gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) textural analysis, to characterize human rotator cuff muscles. The effects of varying scanner settings across two different operators and two US systems were investigated in a healthy volunteer with normal rotator cuff muscles and a patient with chronic massive rotator cuff injury and substantial muscle degeneration. The results suggest that BSC is a promising method for assessing rotator cuff muscles in both control and pathological subjects, even when operators were free to adjust system settings (depth, level of focus, and time-gain compensation).

Quantitative evaluation of rat sciatic nerve degeneration using high-frequency ultrasound.

In this study, we evaluated the utility of using high-frequency ultrasound to non-invasively track the degenerative process in a rat model of peripheral nerve injury. Primary analyses explored spatial and temporal changes in quantitative backscatter coefficient (BSC) spectrum-based outcomes and B-mode textural outcomes, using gray level co-occurrence matrices (GLCMs), during the progressive transition from acute to chronic injury. As secondary analyses, correlations among GLCM and BSC spectrum-based parameters were evaluated, and immunohistochemistry were used to suggest a structural basis for ultrasound outcomes.

Synthesis of Deliquescent Lithium Sulfide in Air.

In the field of lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) and all-solid-state batteries, lithium sulfide (LiS) is a critical raw material. However, its practical application is greatly hindered by its high price due to its deliquescent property and production at high temperatures (above 700 °C) with carbon emission. Hereby, we report a new method of preparing LiS, in air and at low temperatures (∼200 °C), which presents enriched and surprising chemistry.

Extracting Quantitative Ultrasonic Parameters from the Backscatter Coefficient.

The ultrasonic backscatter coefficient (BSC) is a fundamental quantitative ultrasound (QUS) parameter that contains rich information about the underlying tissue. Deriving parameters from the BSC is essential for fully utilizing the information contained in BSC for tissue characterization. In this chapter, we review two primary approaches for extracting parameters from the BSC versus frequency curve: the model-based approach and the model-free approach, focusing on the model-based approach, where a scattering model is fit to the observed BSC to yield model parameters.

"One Stone Two Birds" Strategy of Synthesizing the Battery Material Lithium Sulfide: Aluminothermal Reduction of Lithium Sulfate.

Lithium sulfide (LiS) is a critical material for clean energy technologies, i.e., the cathode material in lithium-sulfur batteries and the raw material for making sulfide solid electrolytes in all-solid-state batteries.

Predicting Spontaneous Pre-term Birth Risk Is Improved When Quantitative Ultrasound Data Are Included With Historical Clinical Data.

Objective: Predicting women at risk for spontaneous pre-term birth (sPTB) has been medically challenging because of the lack of signs and symptoms of pre-term birth until interventions are too late. We hypothesized that prediction of the sPTB risk level is enhanced when using both historical clinical (HC) data and quantitative ultrasound (QUS) data compared with using only HC data. HC data defined herein included birth history prior to that of the current pregnancy as well as, from the current pregnancy, a clinical cervical length assessment and physical examination data.

Green Synthesis for Battery Materials: A Case Study of Making Lithium Sulfide via Metathetic Precipitation.

For some future clean-energy technologies (such as advanced batteries), the concept of green chemistry has not been exercised enough for their material synthesis. Herein, we report a waste-free method of synthesizing lithium sulfide (LiS), a critical material for both lithium-sulfur batteries and sulfide-electrolyte-based all-solid-state lithium batteries. The key novelty lies in directly precipitating crystalline LiS out of an organic solution after the metathetic reaction between a lithium salt and sodium sulfide.

Repeatability, Reproducibility and Sources of Variability in the Assessment of Backscatter Coefficient and Texture Parameters from High-Frequency Ultrasound Acquisitions in Human Median Nerve.

Ultrasound (US) is an increasingly prevalent and effective diagnostic modality for neuromuscular imaging. Gray-scale B-mode imaging has been the dominant US approach to evaluating nerves qualitatively or making morphometric measurements of nerves, providing important insights into pathological changes for conditions such as carpal tunnel syndrome. Among more recent ultrasound strategies, high-frequency ultrasound (often defined as >15 MHz for clinical applications), quantitative ultrasound and image textural analysis offer promising enhancements for improved and more objective approaches to nerve imaging.

US Backscatter for Liver Fat Quantification: An AIUM-RSNA QIBA Pulse-Echo Quantitative Ultrasound Initiative.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is believed to affect one-third of American adults. Noninvasive methods that enable detection and monitoring of NAFLD have the potential for great public health benefits. Because of its low cost, portability, and noninvasiveness, US is an attractive alternative to both biopsy and MRI in the assessment of liver steatosis.